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Strong thoughts seek plain words, for strength goes straight to its object, whether the object be compulsion or conviction.

Hard duties often save from hurtful courses.

The fame that like a rolling snowball grows

Oft wastes away as quickly as it rose.

The dullest man is ingenious enough to deceive himself. Truths which appear of little value may help to bring out other truths of great value.

The vicious pervert their minds in attempting to justify their morals.

As the relations of things often extend farther than we are aware, change may produce unexpected results; so that the longer we live, the more disposed we become to "let well alone."

Most men's minds are like footballs kicked about by contending impulses.

The exemption of women in the United States from out-door toil has some advantages, but both sexes have probably less strength of constitution in consequence.

A writer who leaves his composition to cool will often be struck with the flatness of what he thought fine, and even with the failure of his words to express his ideas.

The ruling principle of the low-minded is to shift off labor and responsibility; to do little for others, and contrive to make others do much for them.

Virtues are faults when pushed to an extreme,

And reason's treacherous when she 's not supreme;
Ordained to rule, if she desert her post,

Her nature's altered and her honor lost.

A hasty observer in a foreign country may easily mistake the whim of an individual for the usage of the people.

The inscription which commemorated the fate of the Invincible Armada might serve as the epitaph of many magnificent expectations: Deus afflavit et dissipantur.*

* God breathed and they are scattered.

When he whose daily walk is heavenward dies,
A single step uplifts him to the skies.

A nation self-governed, when unfit for self-guidance, is like Phaethon in the chariot of the sun.

A man may put others to great inconvenience by too rigid an adherence to rules. The selfish use them as means of self-indulgence, and the narrow-minded overlook the end in the means.

The power of nature o'er the heart
Imparts its charm to mimic art.

Moderate and mutual obligations are favorable to gratitude, but where the obligations are great, and all on one side, gratitude is often overborne by humiliation.

The highest good which earth can give,
And that which makes it life to live,
Is the dear hope that death is gain,
And life's last pang the end of pain,
The hope in which the good expire
Regenerate to rise,

As springs the phoenix from the fire
In glory to the skies.

This world makes promises which only the next world can perform.

Names are bonds, which connect what we hear with what we see.

To judge of the value of thoughts, express them in the simplest language. If then they appear flat, it is because they are so.

Ambitious men of ardent genius rise like volcanic heights upheaved by internal fires.

A good deal of "originality" originates in folly.

Evil has as many shapes as Proteus, and when driven out of one form is apt to appear in another.

The most common cause of failure is attempting too much and doing too little.

A man's tongue frequently gets him into trouble, and his friends frequently prevent him from getting out of it. If there is but one step from the sublime to the ridicu

lous, there is also but one from the profound to the prosy.

Language is so imperfect a medium of communication, that the misapprehensions of it are incessant, and a large portion of what is said must be repeated in a different form before it can be understood.

Men learn but very little of the world during the time that they spend in it.

An anxious man expecting evil rather than hoping good, as he advances in years, is glad if he can say of life, as of a mild winter, " It is wearing away without having been very uncomfortable yet."

If we guard against all the possibilities of ill, we cannot use all the probabilities of good.

Immoderate censure has little power to wound or to

cure.

Good resolutions may often fail, and yet grow gradually into good habits.

The greatest part of what is done for the improvement of the world is required to prevent it from deteriorating.

The "many other reasons that I might present" are generally not worth presenting.

In great emergencies, when common minds are distracted by conflicting thoughts and feelings and unable to act, superior men see what is indispensable and shut their eyes to every thing secondary. After the earthquake of Lisbon, which destroyed thirty thousand persons, the king of Portugal in consternation asked his minister, the Marquis of Pombal, what was to be done. The minister replied, "Bury the dead and feed the living."

But few nights in a year are clear enough for astronomers to make the best observations; so but a small part of life is sufficiently serene for the loftiest contemplations.

A French writer remarks, that "what orators want in depth, they make up in length."

Men's characters depend so much on external influ

ences that some bad men, perhaps, deserve as much credit for being no worse than they are, as some good, men deserve for being as good as they are.

The infirmities of the old may subject them to inconveniences, but their diminished sensibility saves them from many discomforts.

We are so often unreasonable in our expectations, that others are continually disappointing us, so that we seldom judge them impartially until they are dead.

Impatience makes small evils great ones.

Family expenses and annual subscriptions are like revolutions. They never go backwards.

E. W.

ART. III. THE GENUINENESS OF THE GOSPELS.*

CHEVALIER BUNSEN, in the preface to his curious and interesting work on "Hippolytus and his Age," speaks of the "holy belief, that there must be truth in history as well as in reason and conscience, and that this truth exists in Christ and in Christianity." It is with an earnest assurance of this kind, that we turn back to the early history of our religion, and examine whatever documents remain to us connected with its origin, its doctrines, its authority, its early fortunes, and development. These are to be found mainly in the books of the New Testament. But we are immediately met by the question, What evidence have we that these books are genuine and authentic, that they have really come down to

1. Dissertation on the Origin and Connection of the Gospels: with a Synopsis of the Parallel Passages in the Original and Authorized Version, and Critical Notes. By JAMES SMITH, F.R.S. Edinburgh and London. William Blackwood & Sons. 1853. 8vo. pp. 309.

2. Hippolytus and his Age: or, The Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Severus; and Ancient and Modern Christianity and Divinity compared. By CHRISTIAN CHARLES JOSIAS BUNSEN. London. 4 vols. Post 8vo. pp. 352, 359, 384, 512.

3. The Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels. By ANDREWS NORTON. 2d edit. Cambridge. 1846-48. 3 vols. 8vo.

us in good faith, as truthful writings, from the age and from the hands of the Apostles and their companions? This preliminary question, so far as it relates to the genuineness of the four Gospels, we propose to treat in this article. And in order that our reasoning may be plain to any intelligent person who will take the pains to examine it with care, we shall indulge in no curious criticisms or ingenious refinements of speculation, but shall endeavor to keep ourselves close to the subject, and to use as arguments only those facts and testimonies of ancient writers, which are generally admitted by all enlightened scholars who have studied the subject.

The following may be given as a statement of facts admitted on all hands. That a new religion, whose leading features are given in the New Testament, had its origin in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, with Jesus Christ for its author. That Jesus was by birth a Jew, and under Pontius Pilate suffered an ignominious death. That the religion after his death spread rapidly through the Roman empire, so that in the reign of Nero (A. D. 51 – 68) its disciples at Rome, according to Tacitus the Roman historian, were numerous enough to attract the attention of the Emperor and be subjected to his cruelty; and in the reign of Trajan (A. D. 98-117), according to Pliny the younger, they had become so numerous and so influential in his province of Pontus and Bithynia in Asia Minor, that many of all ages and of every rank, not in cities only, but in lesser towns and the open country, were infected by the contagion of this superstition, and to such an extent that the temples had been almost forsaken, and the sacred solemnities for a long time suspended. "Prope jam desolata templa. et sacra solemnia diu intermissa." That they, the Christians, as they were then called, went on increasing, till, at the beginning of the third century, or less than a hundred years after Trajan and Pliny, in spite of severe persecutions and the steady opposition of government, they had become numerous, powerful, and intelligent communities in every part of the civilized world, from the mouth of the Euphrates, if not from the Indus and Hydaspes, to the Bosphorus; from Egypt to Carthage and Numidia; and, in Europe, from the easternmost borders

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